A peer-reviewed updated summary of COVID-19 early-treatment best practices was published Wednesday morning, in Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine, an interdisciplinary scientific, open-access journal.

This international collaboration comprised of physicians, like lead author Peter McCullough, MD, courageously treating patients despite the prevalence of "therapeutic nihilism" among government agencies like the NIH and FDA outlines the urgency of "prompt early initiation of sequenced multidrug therapy (SMDT) to stem the tide of hospitalizations and death."

The early stage of viral replication provides a therapeutic window of tremendous opportunity to potentially reduce the risk of more severe sequelae in high-risk patients. Precious time is squandered with a 'wait and see' approach resulting in unnecessary hospitalization, morbidity, and death. In newly diagnosed, high-risk, symptomatic patients with COVID-19, SMDT has a reasonable chance of therapeutic gain with an acceptable benefit-to-risk profile.

Included in the paper is a "sequential multidrug treatment algorithm" and summaries of the rationale and evidence for each component.

In an alert issued to members, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons urges physicians to "share this new article with your colleagues, any contacts you have in the media, and with leaders in your community." "To overcome the increasing censorship of lifesaving information, it is imperative that everyone pitch in to see that this manuscript is distributed as widely as possible," AAPS states.

The article also includes a list of the numerous countries around the world that are encouraging early treatment. The authors contrast the situation in countries including the U.S. where "the current failure of government support for randomized clinical trials evaluating widely available, generic, inexpensive therapeutics, and the lack of instructive outpatient treatment guidelines (U.S., Canada, U.K., Western EU, Australia, some South American Countries), clinicians must act according to clinical judgment and in shared decision making with fully informed patients."

"Until the pandemic closes with population-level herd immunity potentially augmented with vaccination, early ambulatory SMDT should be a standard practice in high risk and severely symptomatic acute COVID-19 patients beginning at the onset of illness," conclude the authors.

AAPS has represented physicians of all specialties in all states since 1943. The AAPS motto is omnia pro aegroto, meaning everything for the patient.